Most Popular Personal Finance Software

There are a few different personal finance software programs on the market today. However since personal finance isn't a well known type of software, sometimes people will simply buy the most popular personal finance budget software.
This can sometimes be a mistake though.
This is because there are some really good home finance software packages which have great features and are available at a relatively low price; however they aren't as well known as some of the bigger names.
And some of the more popular programs out there aren't as good as the lesser-known ones. Thus whilst buying the most popular personal finance software might seem like a good idea, it might be more sense to choose the best on the market instead.
The choice of personal finance software is made especially hard considering that the fairly popular (and good quality) Microsoft Money was discontinued in 2009, and other popular software (for example Quicken money management) has stopped selling to certain markets, that is in 2006 they stopped selling to the UK market.

As a result of this, many people started buying Home Accounts instead.
However is home Accounts a good piece of software, or is its popularity mainly due to lack of choice? (At the time of writing, it's the bestselling piece of personal finance software on Amazon)
This article will look at three of the most popular home budgeting software programs and look at whether their popularity is well deserved, or instead whether it's simply the result of lack of choice consumer awareness.
As mentioned above, the Home accounts (formerly called Personal accounts) range seen a rise in popularity in 2006 when many people (especially in the UK market) switched to it from Quickens software.
On the face of it, this software has all the features you would want from personal finance budget software, and more: download and import bank and credit card statements, easy-to-use interface, automated direct debits and standing orders, graphics and charts, automatic budgets, forecasting, updates in real time and more.
It's mainly aimed at the UK market though (however we're reviewing it here due to lack of choice of other such software in the UK market) hence it might be difficult to purchase this in the US and other countries.

The companies who create this software are fairly active and happy to listen closely to their customers though, which is always a good sign.
However unfortunately, Home accounts (like Personal accounts before it) doesn't have great reviews: for example, at the time of writing, 36% of Amazon.co.uk customers have given it a bad review (compared to 48% giving it a good review, and the rest are neutral). Hence you might like this piece of software, although be aware that it has its problems.
This was seen by many people as the best personal finance software out there.
Hence it was a big surprise to its many (happy!) customers when Microsoft announced that they would stop producing new versions of it in 2009.

The Microsoft Money Plus software in 2008 has all the main features (including online banking support) which you would expect, however in 2009 Microsoft released Microsoft Money plus Sunset which removed the online banking features.

Hence if you mainly want personal budgeting software for offline purposes, then Microsoft Money might be okay for you. But be aware that they are no longer making new versions of it, and the latest version has no online banking support which means that the millions of people who bank online should unfortunately

look elsewhere for their personal finance software.Screenshot of You Need a Budget Screenshot from Amazon.com showing reviews of the You Need Budget softwareAfter two somewhat bad (or at the very least, unfortunate) reviews, we come to the popular You Need a Budget software.

This is mainly available in the US market, although it does thankfully offer features to change the date format and currency hence British consumers will thankfully not have any difficulty in using this software in the UK.You Need a Budget comes with all the features

you would expect (just like Home accounts), although unlike Home accounts it's also been getting really good reviews!
In fact, check out the screenshot (taken from Amazon.com on 31st August 2010) for a brief look at the reviews of this software.

Clearly this is a very popular piece of software: it has all the features you would expect (and more!) and also great reviews. We already recommend that you considering purchasing this if you are looking for personal finance software.

Best Antivirus Software

Getting the best antivirus software for your computer is absolutely essential. This is because there are unfortunately tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of malicious computer programs - called 'viruses' - around today.
Viruses are programs which are designed to replicate themselves (i.e. spread to other computers where possible) and they usually harm the computer in some way This might take the form of deleting or corrupting important

system files, harming the computer's performance, or (in the best case scenario) simply replicating itself and spreading to as many other computers as possible and then only doing minor harm.
This 'best case scenario' is naturally still undesirable though!
A virus is a type of computer malware (malicious software). Other types of malware include spyware (harmful

programs which spy on what you are doing on your computer), adware (programs which infect your computer and display adverts in undesirable places) and Trojan horses (programs which pretend to be helpful to the user, but actually perform unauthorized, harmful actions).
Viruses are the most common type of malware, although any good antivirus software will usually protect against some of these other forms of malware too.

Clearly, avoiding viruses and other malware is a necessity for your computer's health. Hence this section has been written which contains articles describing various computer antivirus software for download (that is, pieces of software which protect your system), including both paid and free (freeware) antivirus software.

Paid antivirus software is typically better than free antivirus software since paid programs tend to come with more features and better protection, although this is not always true.
There are some free programs which offer better protection than some paid programs. However this is obviously the exception because it is still true that most paid antivirus programs are better than their free counterparts.

PCI and PCIe Graphics Cards

A graphics card (also known as a video card) is a component which generates and outputs images to be displayed via a monitor.
Their support of accelerated rendering of 2D and 3D graphics make them perfect for gaming. In many ways a graphics card is like a mini computer since they have a processing unit (known as a GPU) and its own RAM/memory.

Whilst graphics cards aren't necessary in a computer system, they are usually a necessity for users who want to play computer games via their PC.

This is because many games (even some non-3D ones) require a relatively large amount of graphical processing power, which is where graphics cards tend to excel.
Older graphics cards (sometimes referred to as PCI graphics cards) tend to use what known as a PCI slots on a computer's motherboard to interact with a system.

However the amount of data that can be transferred via a PCI slot started to become restricted due to graphics cards becoming more powerful, hence PCIe graphics cards are now available.

These are ones which use a PCI-express slot (a quicker/better version of PCI) to interact with the motherboard.
ATI and NVidia are the main producers of graphics cards.
There are some other manufacturers, although these two companies account for the vast majority of the market.
It is worth pointing out, though, that ATI and NVidia design and produce the actual graphics cards; however other companies tend to actually sell them.
For example, the ATI Radeon HD 5850 card (a popular high end card) is created by ATI, but you might find it sold as Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 (meaning it is repackaged/sold by Sapphire, despite being created by ATI).

A First Look At the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series

Every year or two, ATI/AMD and NVidia release their newest range of graphics cards in what is always a fairly competitive battle between the two graphics cards companies.
In the previous 'round' (when the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series was released around the same time as the NVidia GTX series), many people agreed that ATI 'won the battle' since the average 5000 series video card provided more 'bang for their buck' compared to their NVidia GTX rivals.
And hot on the tails of its success, we started hearing leaks about the newest AMD graphics card range: the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series.
And then on 21st October 2010, the two main cards of the 6000 range (the 6850 and 6870) were released for retailers to be able to order in.
Now before we get into specifics, it's worth pointing out that you may have noticed how we referred to ATI with regards to the 5000 series, but AMD when it comes to the 6000 series.
In short, this is because AMD purchased ATI a few years ago and has now completed the merge and hence AMD are taking over the ATI brand name, starting with the launch of the Radeon HD 6000 series.